cubinator

Yesterday I watched a video about a rhombic dodecahedron and was absolutely sold on the shape, so I went ahead and found a twisty puzzle in that shape online. Something to celebrate ten years of cubing on the 22nd, I suppose.

Can the Dragon 2 test flight carry a cheese wheel in a spacesuit?

Would not go there.

The great storm of 2011:

Flex Pope

Granted, but it just pulls from random Space Engine maps and changes numbers in the config files, so they're not that great. I wish for a wormhole generator that works on reasonable energy levels, is safe to travel through, and can be reverse-engineered.

No, not quite that extreme. It was the deadlines for building the spacecraft.

Just got inside from a successful observation of Uranus. I was just barely able to discern a disk, and there were very few nearby stars to make a sketch from to find it again. It wasn't completely dark yet, so it was easier to tell that this object wasn't a blue star. I was not able to make out any of the moons. I think magnitude 10 is about the dimmest I can see, maybe some dimmer stuff towards the zenith. That makes all of the major planets! What's next? I hope to observe the Moon occulting Aldebaran in December, and to keep an eye out for upcoming bright comets and asteroids.

I have seen all of the planets as of today!

I would find this somewhat helpful too.

To protect the electronics from being fried by Jupiter's intense radiation belts, wiring in the Voyager probes was wrapped (due to extreme lack of time before launch) in kitchen-grade aluminum foil bought at a local store.

I saw three fairly bright satellites in high orbits tonight. Two of them were in polar orbits fairly close together at slightly different longitudes, perhaps ten degrees apart. One of those two, the first I noticed, reflected a bright flare of sunlight in my direction. The third was visible later,on a southwesterly path. All three were clearly in very high orbits due to their slow speed, even though the first two were close to directly overhead. I tried looking for Uranus, but was unable to identify it.

Sounds cool! Maybe a big young one with lots of star-forming regions.

That's pretty cold! Unfortunately I know what those temps feel like.

Looks like Doug Rattman as a Kerbal. Hmm...

F or C? This morning the temperature was -11 C where I live.

In this thread, we will describe things that seem mundane and perfectly normal today to our future grandkids or other young whippershnappers of the future who will have vastly superior technology and different lifestyles. For instance: Back in my day, it took MINUTES to write an email to somebody! You couldn't just beam it to their mind! When I was your age, you had to know how to drive a car yourself! And at an intersection there were big red lights and you had to WAIT for the other cars to stop before you could go! While primarily directed towards the younger members of the community, older folks are welcome to give replies relevant to their generations too.

That is a very nice painting!

Perhaps both, to some degree.

I read it like that too, immediately. There was no question in my brain.

This chart may be of use:

I might be able to see it with my 12mm eyepiece, but I was unsuccessful in switching the eyepieces while keeping the telescope aligned last night.

My telescope (an 8" Schmidt-Cassegraine) is not quite big enough to resolve Neptune as anything more than a point, I think, but Uranus might be. When it comes into the evening sky I'll try to find it, and I think I will be able to track some of it's moons too if I can't see the disk.

Click

Until next year.